Re: Idiocy of the first water.

Even if it can't be done, there's still no reason to not try and do it anyway.

The reason being is that the small steps may be possible, even if the end target is impossible. I don't think this trip would be possible without engines of 94% efficiency. They have them now, but they didn't at the start. Meaning they started on an impossible task in the first place.

10 years ago...

When I started doing this 10 years ago, it was expected that the in-house guys knew what they were doing. They build infrastructure, wrote code, did some development work.

Now though, it seems these basic skills of building say, a web server, or a mysql database, or a webpage with a bit of java on it to do something simple has disappeared from IT teams.

Everything is spoon fed to them by vendors. The IT teams go out into the market place, get bombarded with information about the particular task they want to achieve, and are then forced to choose one, based on no knowledge at all, just the scales of cost the individual vendors are pushing at them.

You wonder why places buy the cheapest, or the most functional (but not necessarily the most functioning) bit of software? You wonder why businesses are so confused they seem to buy the nearest bit of crap to what they want without thinking about the environment they need?

There is very little skill left in the IT sector now. If you're wondering where its gone, look at the smallest, sweat filled cupboard with no air-con or adequate ventilation at any vendors office. Thats the place where our best developers and system architects are. Stuck in pre-sales designing overly complex systems for generic solutions for people who don't understand what they are buying, or buying into.

Love them or hate them...

personally they can have a bit of data about me for the time being as they seem to be the only massive company funding these exploits to a realistic level.

That and their approach to new technology. Not just the 3D sensing phone thing, or even google glass, but the contact lense for detecting salt levels in tears for medical stuff, robotic cars and probably the myriad of other stuff they have under wraps.

They are not just not being evil, but they are doing some good for humanity too.

This is a tough one...

As a thought experiment:

You have 2 developers, A and B. They are both tasked with writing some code to do the same thing.

Both attended the same classes, and have exactly the same skill level. Both are highly nerdy types with a particular affinity for writing highly optimised code. Both also don't like leaving comments in the code.

They sit in separate rooms to write the solution.

When they have both finished they leave their respective rooms and hand in their work.

No Cat-calling?

Maybe they would like to be approached personally and face to face by these people then?

I can probably see that if 5 or 6 blokes cat-called at once could be a little bit scary, but would you rather them walk up to your face and say something?

What if its one guy cat-calling? What if he actually wants your number, and he is your ideal partner and all he is doing is trying to get your attention? Would you be happier if he ran over, stopped you in the street to get your number? Or would we get another "artist" taking photos and complaining that men kept approaching her personally, to her face? What if he couldn't get to you before you disappeared in the subway, or got on the bus or something?

What if they didn't whistle, but said "wow, you're gorgeous" loud enough for you to hear? Is that a cat-call?

What I am saying here is that life is not black and white. Its 50 shades of...wait hang on....life isn't black and white, its never that simple.

Us blokes have to get your attention somehow. And if you are on the other side of the street, we need to shout, or whistle or something.

Do we have to only meet you in certain places? What if you're not in those places? what if you're on the way to that place and we see you inbetween meeting places? Are we banned from getting your attention?

I'm playing devils advocate here, but come on. It'd be a pretty sad life if no-one commented on anything male, female, positively or negatively. We'd all be wondering around not daring to notice each other, eyes to the floor in case we saw something we didn't want to see, or did want to see but couldn't comment on in public..

I tell you this as well. Whistling is a damn sight easier and quicker than trying to shout something not deemed to be sexist:

"Excuse me madam, but you are looking especially radiant this morning and I wish to demonstrate my appreciation of your beauty, without feeling the need to interrupt your day further. Good morrow to you."

I love el Reg Commentards

I have recently found that System Administration is incredibly boring, and I was worried about the risks to that role as I seemed to be writing the scripts and the programs to automate my job. (If I can do it, someone with more business acumen can do it too and sell it for load of money to all sorts of firms)

I decided that instead of "doing IT" I would do "Applied IT". There are computers in everything nowadays, so it can't possibly be (and isn't) beyond my wits to learn new software/applications/services etc... so that's what I did.

I have learned a great deal where I am now, and applying my IT skills. I am working a lot harder though ;-)

Now I can say that I don't work in IT, I work in broadcasting - which is a damn site more interesting and people talk to you...even if they do try and weasel free Satellite TV out of you ;-)

Ah Irony

The reason why I hate it is because when I'm reading a document on how to fix a server, and as I'm reading I hit the windows key, type the name of the program I need and hit enter WHILE I AM STILL TRYING TO READ THE DOCUMENT I get a giant fucking menu in the way.

Even if I have to look at my keyboard to type the name of the command (not very often), having my whole screen flash in the corner of my eye is a real distraction.

That's simply it from my point of view. The rest is just an OS. A means to an end, but not an end in itself.

Re: Leaving, not because of Murdoch

Same here.

I left Sky as they were next to useless and I heard about this bunch of guys at BE, who did everything I wanted them to. Great support, static IPs..etc...etc... and if you want a laugh get on their BBS.

Now I'm back at sodding sky and I'm expecting it to be as terrible as it was when I left.

Can't help but notice that my internet isn't half as stable as it used to be already, or is that psychosomatic?

Congrats guys

I never thought I would align myself with any media company, but as you're here you'll do.

Its nice to be able to congratulate or rip apart any reporter, and have them come back at you with more facts and opinions and be happy to take part in conversations with us.

the news stories are what you do. You're going to do that anyway. But its that interaction, and the paper plane experiments, and the playmobile stuff, the fairly unmoderated comment boards and countless other "random" stuff you do that sets you apart. This is why we're here.

Here you go then:

The people who say they’re against this bill need to look victims of serious crime, terrorism and child sex offences in the eye and tell them why they’re not prepared to give the police the powers they need to protect the public.

I'm not prepared give the police excessive powers they think they need to protect the tiny minority of the unfortunate members of public affected by these heinous crimes.

Anybody who is against this bill is putting politics before people’s lives.

Certainly I am ensuring that surveillance is not put upon innocent members of the public, using the unfortunate and rare occasion (numbers of people attacked vs population of UK) someone may be harmed due to this surveillance not being in place.

There will be paedophiles who will not be identified and it will reduce our ability to deal with this serious organised crime.

Possibly yes. A small percentage of paedophiles who make up a tiny proportion of the UK may go free. They are not pokemon, you will never catch them all.

I've said this before about server-side applications or services, but equally its true for end-user\consumer devices.

Consumers no longer have to buy a specific device because it is the only one that has function z. All devices do function z. Its not important what device the consumer uses, as long as they have the choice of which device to use. Which one does a specific function better?

I have a computer that I use for recording music, editing video and playing games. Its a dual-boot linux and win7 box

I have a core I3 laptop for when I'm mooching out and about for a week or so, or for when I want to write a blog, but don't want to sit on my horrid office chair but instead sit on my comfy sofa. It is also dual boot, because linux boots faster, and sometimes I play games on it.

I have a tablet that lives on my bedside table or the coffee table in the lounge, or in the kitchen or for surfing the web, looking at the news, looking up recipes or for googling facts to support conversations and things because its always on.

I have a netbook for when I'm sleepless in bed and want to write something, or if I'm going to be away for a weekend and need something small I can type on reasonably well.

I have a smartphone for calling people and googling stuff in the pub.

Too many devices? Maybe. But they each have a purpose, and they each run a different OS.

I haven't got time to be a fan of any particular company, and I'm not stupid enough to get locked into anything I don't want to be locked into when I have the choice.

Sorry, I was trying to suggest that some documents may be kept secret forever knowing that it would cause a public outcry if released. Either destroyed or put in the back of a cupboard somewhere, never to see the light of day again.

I'm for full disclosure of everything, I can probably say with some certainty that it hasn't ever happened, and I'm not sure how it would even work.

Having a random Private turn up and release it when he hasn't got the full picture of what is going on is definitely not the way to do it though.

I think the documents should be released, and the videos. But maybe not now. Maybe in 20 years time. Soon enough so people remember what was going on, and late enough that the information isn't as valuable.

But to never release these documents would be a crime as we need to be honest with ourselves about what our governments did/are doing.

Maybe the better policy would have been to hold these documents until the government declassified them, then add yours to the pile with a suitable shock filled headline.

Like I said, I wouldn't like to call it. He did wrong, but how much wrong?

Also, who now actually gives a flying shit what OS they are running as long as whatever services run on whatever it is they are designed to run on?

the important bit is that, if it breaks, you know how to fix it quickly before anyone notices.

What you have just told me, is that you're such a stuck up twonk that you are unwilling to learn new or different technologies, that you can't actually use or configure anything a "click monkey" could use or configure and you are so unbending that you probably couldn't bring yourself to help out if there was a problem with any of my Windows environment.

Nice work.

p.s just noticed, first para "difficult to configure" - how does this match with "click-monkey"? Are you suggesting windows admins achieve infinite clicks, or that they actually know what they are doing?

It sounds like you spoke to some kind of careers advisor or looked up what the job description was?

I didn't look up my job role. I didn't speak to a careers advisor. I didn't aim to become a Systems Administrator. I just wanted to work with computers - as sad as that sounds.

It was a natural progression for me to take my scripting and computing skills I learned as a kid into work with me. "Whinging users" always turned up at the helpdesk (I didn't go to Uni, started at the bottom) with the same problems, so I scripted the responses as far as possible.

I realised I could write scripts to do all sorts of stuff, if only I knew what language I needed to write in and what stuff I wanted to do what. No one told me I'd need to, or had to. I just did it. With a smile because I enjoy it.

Every time I changed job I learned a new way of doing things, new languages, new operating systems. I didn't care what the job was, or even what the role required me to do, it was how I did it that mattered.

The benefit is, as I had scripted most of my tasks, I could get on with the fun stuff.

Like playing with storage, or networking, or reading The Reg and talking to you.

" I eventually went into systems administration. The joke was on me with that choice; by becoming a sysadmin, I ended up just having to learn a greater diversity of languages. I did not escape software development."

That's an interesting statement, but having to learn lots of different languages shouldn't have surprised you really. As a Sys Admin you are categorically not doing development work. You are writing code. Same as I built myself a brick BBQ but I wouldn't consider myself a builder.

On my CV I include things like Perl, Python, Javascript, VBScript, Bash, ASP etc..etc.. but when it comes to interviews I have to state categorically that I am not a developer.

I am a Sys Admin, and IMHO a bloody good one. You need to be able to write or at least read in as many different languages as required in order to be a good Sys Admin.

You can't sit there doing the same 150 mouse clicks or whatever thousands of times over to do something. You script it, fire it off and go get coffee or go to the pub, or maybe do something else constructive.

I'm not saying that I am any good at writing code though. The code I write is for a purpose. Normally throw away stuff. The point is that it works and can be made to work quickly, not that it works well. I am NOT a developer.

Developers should write good optimised code in some specific languages. In my opinion, good Sys Admins should be expected to write some code in *any* language.

Re: Still using my £120 AAO first series

Thanks.

From memory, its a 2.5" 10mm? drive. something like that.

I used the zif connector from the original SSD. No mods. Because the 110 wasnt designed to take the drive I filed a little bit off the mounting posts for the motherboard. The keyboard isnt exactly level any more but it works.

The 8GB SSD that came with it was rubbish. The spinny disk has overheated, been dropped off the sofa/bed/hotel table/etc... numerous times and barely works.

Still using my £120 AAO first series

Got rid of the SSD and put a spinny disk in it. Ubuntu 12.04, upgraded to 1.5gb ram

Works like a charm.

Why is a similar specced Netbook still over £200? It's rediculous!

Incidentally, can anyone help? I'm looking to go back to SSD with it. I don't have it on me, but IIRC its an AAO 110L. Does anyone have any suggestion on what would fit in the case and has a ZIF connector?